Though cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables have been ruled out as causing the disease, German bean sprouts have been-off-and-on again-considered to be the culprit. SPIEGEL ONLINE reported 18 local people and three workers at a bean sprouts farm in Lower Saxony fell ill. Originally, cucumbers from Spain were blamed for the infections.
A June 10 report on Deutsche Welle states “bean sprouts are the likely source of an E. coli outbreak in Germany that has killed 31 people and made nearly 3,000 ill since May.” This information was attributed to Reinhard Burger, president of Germany’s federal infectious disease laboratory, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).